Performance Lags

[Calfret]

My FPS drop way down. I had a thought: does the lighting reduce game performance? I have tons of electric lights everywhere, and I am wondering if that is leading to some of these issues. Also, how does chunk loading work in Icarus? Will my base be sapping resources while I am away exploring the arctic?

[Rekal]

I do think the electric lighting is a bit of a resource hog partially because you need so many of them to look nice and then they count as new point lights for lighting effects and to cast shadows.

Base size also plays a big part in lag in the late game when you've got a developed property. Each building piece has structural integrity checks and shelter checks are made for pretty much everything else. Those are checked regularly even when you're away and end up being sort of like the primary load on your CPU. Too much of this will slow your frame rate down pretty linearly.

When things happen around you - lots of animal AI, chunk loading, storms kicking off - it ends up being extra CPU processing dropped on top of that other load and this is where the hitching starts. If the base checks are already hitting 100% core utilization and slowing your frame rate then any extra causes the frames to drop even further which looks like the whole game freezing while the core crunches the numbers to catch up.

And yes, the game is still simulating your base with all the checks when you're away. It will reduce your frame rate. The only real options unless they completely overhaul the system is to keep your base size at a reasonable size. Paving the world is not going to end well.

Outpost mode uses a much smaller map so the size you can build your base to is much more generous before the frame rate starts to drop. If you want to build a huge fancy base, that's the place to go. Keeping your open world base a bit more practical will save your frames.

These are just personal observations so take them with a grain of salt. Aim for around 200 to 250 pieces (walls/floors/deployables/etc) and you shouldn't see any problems. A 6x4 is plenty big to fit almost everything on a single floor and only 44 pieces per floor with another ~48 for the roof and foundation. That puts you under 200 for an empty 6x4 three story house which is pretty huge considering. Most CPUs seem to start to slow at around 400+ but that's across the map. So if your base is ~250, you have some overhead left to build permanent ramps and bridges in other locations.